Reply To: Minahg Lag BaOmer or outdoor fire prohibition

Ubiquitin, Lubavitch has a mesorah that R’Shimon Bar Yochai told his followers to mark his passing by lighting bonfires. I don’t know how accurate it is, but it exists.

There’s an idea that came into vogue among Zionist scholars (some of whom were secular and some of whom were frum) that the bonfires were a remembrance of the signal fires of the Bar Kochba rebellion. As a historian I don’t find that a compelling indication of it being an ancient custom, even if it fit an ideological agenda.

The Bar Kochba rebellion might have used signal fires, at least between outposts in the Judean hills. But those who lived there would have used them anyways, rebellion or not, to indicate holidays, or to warn of things other than Romans.

In the years following the Rebellion, there would have been fewer residents than ever of those hills; there would have been less wood for burning and fewer people to keep fires burning and under control; and there would have been an active Roman occupation that would have stamped out any customs as we are told they did. So I do NOT think that custom would have had anywhere to gain traction.

If we’re going to find the earliest indications of this custom, we’d need to look at places where the Jewish community wasn’t restricted to cities and ghettos. In places like those, bonfires were dangerous and generally forbidden by the authorities for practical reasons, even more than to persecute.

I’d look to places like Spain and southern France, where there were Jewish communities that were not restricted to cities; to places in eretz Yisroel like Pekiin in the Galil, with more wood and less strife, where there were Jews right through until the crusades; or places further East.